Probably the most important factor is the case. Look for one that:- allows for larger fans. For a given amount of air flow, larger fans are typically slower and therefore quieter.- allows for multiple fans. A couple of slow fans will be quieter than one fast one.- is a quality unit that will not rattle.

Also, get a larger CPU heatsink. A larger unit will allow for a larger, slower fan to be mounted. Also, it will dissipate heat more readily.

Fan RPMs are the enemy-- given decent quality fans, the slower one (even if it's physically larger) is quieter than the faster one, and it seems to me that fan noise dwarfs everything else.

A chassis designed for good airflow is where I'd start, though I haven't needed one in years so I don't know what's on the market right now. Something that can mount big honkin' fans-- the 80mm units we used six or eight years ago sound like a jet engine compared to a 120mm fan; the chassis I'm using now (Antec 900) has a monstrous 200mm fan sticking out the top that never seems to be spinning very fast at all, but still pushes a lot of air around.

It used to be we just expected the power supply fan to suck all the heat out of the machine, but those years are long since gone. You can't do much about what's in the power supply if you like having a warranty, so buy one that doesn't sound like a Motley Crue concert up front.

You can get a beefier CPU fan/heatsink that's physically larger than what comes with the chip, which can help keep its fan speed down. Given how easy it is to swap out a CPU fan, I'd see how noisy the one that comes with it gets first. There's a trade-off here, of course, if you want to overclock: You can crank up the clock speed, but you'll have to spin the fan faster to cover for it.

At least right now, video card fans seem to be my problem. There's only so much fan you can fit on a PCI-e card, so if you want it quiet while still pumping out 60fps at some insane resolution in your favorite game, you may have to water-cool to get the heat to somewhere you can apply a huge fan to it rather than the miniature one that comes on the card. My own solution has simply been to turn up the speakers a skosh and deal with it. :-/

Well guys I'm not planning on a HTPC or running a sound studio. But I just want something a little quieter then what I have now.As it is, I can't stand to wear my hearing aids around my system. It's that noisy.

I wouldn't fuss about getting a fanless power supply. Just get a quality unit (e.g., Seasonic, Corsair) of a lower wattage rating with a >=12cm fan on the underside and you'll never hear it. Some such units don't even bother to run the fan at lower current draw levels.

I wouldn't fuss about getting a fanless power supply. Just get a quality unit (e.g., Seasonic, Corsair) of a lower wattage rating with a >=12cm fan on the underside and you'll never hear it. Some such units don't even bother to run the fan at lower current draw levels.

The only Seasonics and Corsairs that have fanless operation at lower loads are the X Series based models. That includes the AX650/750/850. My AX850's fan basically doesn't turn on unless I'm gaming. It doesn't even turn on during Prime95 Blend testing.

If the OP can swing an X-560 or AX650, they are wonderful units.

Other than that my advice is to be very picky about fans. I love Scythe Kama Flow 2s. The 1400 RPM models have a startup voltage around 2.5V and are dead silent until about 600 RPM. They remain very well behaved up to about 1100 RPM. Turn all but one exhaust fan around to act as intakes. To me this seems to reduce resonance with stamped fan grilles. If you have a tower cooler blowing air horizontally you'll want the top fan in a case to blow down and the rear fan to exhaust.

A solid caseA big passive CPU cooler (I've used a lot of Scythe heatsinks without fans, no problems)Passive graphics card (plenty to choose from by Sapphire and Gigabyte)Quiet PSUBig, slow fans.

I have an Antec 300 running the 140mm top fan and rear 120mm fan at 7v, a cheap PSU with 120mm fan. The CPU (C2D E8400) is cooled by a Scythe Ninja 2 heatsink, and the graphics card is a passively cooled ATI HD4550. It sits behind the TV and is totally inaudible unless you stick your head behind the TV.

Thanks guys. However how much performance do I have to give up for quietness?

-Bill

Just like anything in life.. "it depends". If money is no object you can give up almost no performance (liquid cooled everything?). For mortals with a budget, I'd say your biggest debate is going to be over a video card. I know I built my latest PC to be as quiet as possible - SSD, multiple 140mm fans, after market CPU cooling system. I prefer Nvidia video cards, and I ended up with a GT 220 video card that is 100% passively cooled - no fans. Plenty good enough to drive 2 X 1080p displays, but it's not going to rock Crysis 2. I'm looking for a GPU upgrade, and it looks like I can get Nvidia 570's that have pretty good stock cooling systems (1 large fan) but anything above that gets tricky.

As far-future as your new build seems to be, I wouldn't worry about anything on the market right now. Every thread I see you create on the subject shows that you won't be building a new PC anytime soon, so no matter what we recommend, it will be obsolete by the time you build it.

My current system is:i7 920 - Undervolted to ~1V (it was fine without this, but it was about 10C hotter at idle and load)Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev.C (I think, might be one of the earlier versions from that line)1 Noctua NF-S12 mounted to the heatsink and set to 600RPM.1 Noctua NF-S12 mounted in the front of the case and set to 600RPM.Radeon 5750 - Forget the exact model, but it's passively cooled.GF210 - MSI, I think. Also passive.2 Samsung Eco Green 1TB drives.1 Crucial C300.12 GB of RAM.Antec Solo case.Seasonic X-400 (Fanless PSU)

You pretty much need to put your head under my desk to even hear that it's running. It idles in the low 40s and (with prime95 stress test running) hits 65-70C under load.

Given that I was building my system from scratch, the only things I had to do differently from a normal build was to swap the PSU and fans that came with the case and mount a heatsink other than the OEM version. Cost wise, it was probably within $100 of the same system with no effort made to be quiet. The only place I was limited was in the GPU options. There aren't a ton of passive choices and they're generally a bit more expensive than the versions with fans.

I've upgraded since the original build (Modu82+ PSU, Passive 4670, SSD), but otherwise it's lasted me a few years pretty well. I'm planning to upgrade to something Ivy Bridge based and probably just a single 6xx series video card once they release the lower-end cards (and someone makes a passive version).

As far-future as your new build seems to be, I wouldn't worry about anything on the market right now. Every thread I see you create on the subject shows that you won't be building a new PC anytime soon, so no matter what we recommend, it will be obsolete by the time you build it.

Yeah it's pointless to recommend specific components when there's no timeline for purchasing.

Putting a little thought into component choices can result in a fast, quiet PC. A good case and PSU are the most important, I'd say. Once you have that, modern CPUs are going to stay pretty quiet, even with the stock fan, until you really start pushing them. I typically game with headphones on so the GPU noise doesn't bother me as much, but you can trade performance for quiet in that case.

Silent PC Review and the C&CF forum are both good resources once you're actually buying stuff.

There things that I have found that make a big difference on the noise level from my system is a good case (Antec Sonata Pronto RT), a good cooler (I have a Cooler Master hyper 212 + w/two fan), and a SSD. Between these three things I almost never hear a sound from my computer even when gaming on it.

I wouldn't bother with fanless CPUs and GPUs unless you're really after a silent comptuer.

My original reason for the (very near) silence was that in the apartment I was in, my computer pretty much had to be in my bedroom. At my new apartment, my computer now has its own room, but I've gotten so used to having the silent system that it's hard to go back to anything louder. I'm constantly noticing how loud my friends' "quiet" computers are.

Yeah it's pointless to recommend specific components when there's no timeline for purchasing.

If I'm lucky, I might be able to build in Dec. Anyway I did go two years without internet. So right now I'm catching up. I'm also bored.

-Bill

If you're waiting that long to buy, I'd use the time to catch up on the reviews on Silent PC Review. Lots of new products will come out between now and then, but SPCR won't review that many (and doesn't really need to since most stuff doesn't even aim to be quiet) so you can choose stuff now and be pretty safe when it's build time.